I'm Down: A Memoir (5 page)

To which I replied, “You’re so dumb, you thought Buddhism was about booty.” It wasn’t one of my finer moments, but Anora laughed.

“What’s going on?” she asked Anora.

My sister smiled and rolled around on her bed and said, “Mishna capped on you.”

That was when Mom bent over, looked me right in the eye, and said in a very sincere voice, “I really don’t like being capped on. It hurts my feelings.” Hippies have a way of sucking the fun out of everything.

I couldn’t really cap on my father, either. He was happy that I was getting along at GSCC, but my few attempts at capping on my father (the six-foot-four, two-hundred-pound exlinebacker) were experiments in fear.

One day after day camp, I had swaggered up to him on the sofa where he was outfitting the broken TV knob with an adjustable wrench, and said, “You’re so ugly, the itsy bitsy spider saw you at the other end of the water spout and decided to take his chances with the rain.” That was when he pinched me in a place between my neck and shoulder, like a Vulcan, until I went limp.

But I assumed that the reason he Vulcan-neck-pinched me
was because the cap wasn’t very good. So next day, I decided to make fun of his head shape, with a surefire winner I had stolen from Rodney. Dad, however, didn’t laugh or high-five me. In fact, he didn’t react at all. He just quietly grabbed some nuts from the nut bowl and began cracking them with his bare hands. He did this in silence for a while, looking me right in the eye before saying, “I’m not about to take it from my daughter in my own home. . . . I take it from the Man every day.”

“Okay,” I said.

Then his voice got really low and he grabbed my chin in order to look at me in the eye and said, “This shit stops here.”

Which I assumed meant, “Go pick on your sister.”

My sister endured all kinds of verbal abuse from me during this time. It didn’t even bother me that “your mama” jokes directed at my little sister were “my mama” jokes. And I used her as a sounding board for all my new caps. I found I could measure the effectiveness of the put-down by how berserk she went. She would sit watching TV, and I would walk into the living room and make some declaration about how smelly she was or how much the ugly stick liked her. If she glared at me and went back to the TV, it meant the cap needed tweaking. If I got her to yell at me or throw something, I was definitely on to something. And if she whirled her arms, in a move that could best be described as “the windmill” and clubbed me about the head in a flurry of blind rage—I had a winner. I didn’t hit back, though. Hitting her back meant facing Dad and the five fingers of death. So I happily took the licks as payment due for her allowing me to use her as a focus group.

Every day at GSCC Club I learned something new. Like Caprice taught me that throwing
psych!
on the end of a flattering comment was an awesome way to make a fool out of someone.
You could walk up to any unsuspecting person and say, “Nice shirt . . . PSYCH!” It was cheap, but it was almost more effective than a straight cap, because you couldn’t brace yourself for it. The only way to brace yourself for a
psych!
was to already think you were a piece of shit—which, if you did, you were capping at a Jedi level.
Faggot
was also en mode, thanks in part to Eddie Murphy. None of us knew what a faggot was, but it rolled off the tongue like butter, and I used it as a comma.

When the end of day camp came, I found myself a little sad. I was really gonna miss everyone, especially Caprice, who had made me a very pretty Chinese jack as part of an alliance against Jamal. I thought it would be nice if just once all her hair was done, but I didn’t have the skills to finish it, so I drew her a picture of Jamal with breasts.

The counselors announced that, for the last day of camp, we were required to do a performance for all of the parents. They suggested a song and dance number about our experience at Government Subsidized Charity Club. Which was strange, because all we did all summer was sit in a dank room and make fun of each other while they sat in an office and handed out the occasional kick ball. So, the number we wrote was called “I’m in a Cappin’ Mood.” We sat in a circle with a small Casio keyboard that someone had brought in, and wrote caps for ourselves to the prerecorded beats. Jamal and Caprice wrote for the younger kids like Anora, Gitana, and Rene, who couldn’t write their own caps.

The night of the show we stood in a line on a makeshift stage, swaying back and forth as we sang the chorus;

I’m in a cappin’ mood (clap, clap)

I’m in a cappin’ mood (clap)

Then one by one we stepped downstage to deliver our own personal cap.

Jamal, who was standing next to me, was first. The room was filled with the twenty or so parents who had bothered to show up on the last day of camp. They watched patiently, knowing that it was penance for the months of almost free child care. Jamal fearlessly stepped forward and stayed on beat as he committed to the delivery of his cap.

Keep your shoes on

If you don’t mind,

’Cause your feet smell like

A cow’s behind.

Then the whole group did the chorus.

I’m in a cappin’ mood (clap, clap)

I’m in a cappin’ mood (clap)

My turn. I felt my stomach turn into knots as I stepped in front of the row of kids trying to keep the beat with my rhythmless body, while I delivered my cap.

You’re so poor.

It’s really sad.

I was at the junkyard.

And I bought your dad.

I got a laugh and it felt like coming home.

Through the rest of the performance I joined in on the chorus and watched the rest of the caps, thinking that they didn’t quite measure up to the caliber of mine. And when we
were all finished, the parents seemed truly impressed. But I was most excited for Dad to see how down I was, and how many sister friends I had made. And when I left the stage he smiled and said good job. Then he walked me over to meet Jamal’s mom, who had huge breasts and very red lips—both of which Dad liked. Jamal’s mom proceeded to tell me how great I was—and she was right.

Dad agreed with her, but then added, “Yeah, but I’ll tell you one thing. You cap on me . . . you better not cap on me, ’cause I’ll go upside your ass.” But then he laughed at his own joke, so I knew it was just something he said so that I didn’t get too big for my britches.

“Well, call me sometime,” Jamal’s mom said, writing something on a piece of paper and handing it to Dad. Dad wrote something on the other side of the same piece of paper and handed it back to her, “No, you call me.”

And as we walked away, my dad said smiling, “She don’t gotta know that the phone’s off .” We had missed a phone bill and gotten disconnected, meaning incoming calls only. I smiled back. The night just couldn’t get any cooler.

As we drove home, Anora was bouncing in her seat and Dad was humming the chorus to, “I’m in a Cappin’ Mood.” And when we rolled onto our street, I saw the kids on the corner—Jason, Nay-Nay, and Latifa. And something had changed in the way they looked. Like somehow they seemed less intimidating, and much less cool to me. If I were to jump out of the car at that moment, I wouldn’t be scared—I would be doing them a favor. And there was a new freedom in the air. In fact, I knew that I would never be afraid of them again—because I had the power of the cap!

“G
ET DRESSED
, we have people coming over,” Dad said.

“Who?” I asked without looking up from the TV. I was still in my pajamas at eleven o’clock and had every intention of remaining that way until after my stories. GSCC had ended, but we still had a month left of summer vacation before school, which meant I had just enough time to catch up on
Days of Our Lives
and
Another World
. And by catch up, I meant on the outfits, not the story. I only watched soap operas for the style.

“What about breakfast?” Anora asked. She was sitting next to me, holding my old stuffed Snoopy doll.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dad said. “It’s almost lunch.”

“I want breakfast!” Anora said, getting upset. “Then we can have lunch!”

“Shhh,” I said, rubbing my sister’s arm to earn my allowance. She calmed down a little bit.

“Who’s coming over?” I asked.

“Big Lyman and his kids,” Dad replied.

“Big Lyman has kids?” Anora asked.

“That’s what I said,” Dad said, walking up to the TV and turning it off—right as Kaylah, of
Days
fame, walked onscreen
wearing the most amazing pink rayon overall-dress with shoulder pads.

“Why is Big Lyman coming?”

“We are gonna remodel! He’s gonna watch over shit ’cause he’s an engineer.” I didn’t know that word and rather than ask, I tried to decipher what that meant.
Remodel: to model again.
Yes, that sounded right.

“I’m hungry!” Anora said.

“Shhh,” I said, feeling hungry myself. “We’ll get some food in a little bit. . . . Right, Dad?”

“Yeah!” he said. “Don’t you always get fed sooner or later?”
Later
was the answer to that one.

“Were they Big Lyman’s kids before?” my sister asked.

“Yes,” Dad said. “They was always Big Lyman’s kids.”

“But how come we never met them?” I asked. “Where were they before?”

And Dad said, as though it explained everything, “Texas.”

An hour later Big Lyman arrived. His hair had its usual Don King vibe and his tawny skin had summer freckles as he ushered his two kids, Little Lyman and Zwena, into our kitchen. That’s when he explained to Dad that they had been living with their mom, but with the event of his marriage to a woman named Lordess, Big Lyman wanted them all to be a family.

Big Lyman stood at the counter, talking loudly while absentmindedly tapping a Newport from his pack, unaware that every time he moved, his five-year-old son, Little Lyman, who was hiding behind his leg, had to reposition himself. From what I could see of him, he was much darker than his father and, when he wasn’t hiding, his huge eyes were trained on Anora.

Meanwhile Big Lyman’s daughter, Zwena, fearlessly struck up a conversation with me. Zwena was three years older than
me and was light-skinned like her father but without freckles. She wore plastic glasses that slid down her nose and she seemed to have some sort of nasal problem that manifested itself in a runny nose, a nasally voice, and a hand I didn’t want to shake. Because of that, she was a mouth breather, and watching her I noticed there was a crust in the corners of her mouth that she didn’t seem too concerned with removing. She was also the unfortunate combination of sickly and energetic, which meant she would get so excited with whatever she was talking about, that she would run out of energy and have to take a second or two to recharge before she could finish her thought.

“We were on an airplane,” she said, buddying up to me by starting a story in the doorway to the kitchen. “And it got a little bumpy, and there are these ladies that come out and serve you drinks that were running around, but the plane was really moving”—Zwena looked like she was gonna pop—“and the one lady fell on the other lady . . . and you know what the one lady said?” At this point Zwena ran out of air and started breathing in a way that begged the question:
Why doesn’t this girl have an inhaler?

It took Zwena about a minute to spit it out, and finally she whispered, breathing heavily through laughter, “Heifer.”

“What’s a heifer?” I asked. And she just threw her arms up, frustrated. But next to Zwena I actually looked cool, so I liked her right away. And Little Lyman was the same age as Anora, who was quickly able to coax him out from behind his father’s leg by asking him, “Why you so scared of me?”

Within minutes of them arriving, the four of us had ditched the grown-ups and were outside sitting on Big Lyman’s Ranchero. Zwena helped break the ice by asking us, “What if you won a million dollars?” And it was agreed that if we all were millionaires, we’d be spending a lot of time at McDonald’s.
Then Dad and Big Lyman came outside and stood in the front yard looking at the house. As Dad pointed out various things around the yard, Big Lyman nodded and took the occasional drag off the Newport hanging from his long-nailed fingers.

I asked Zwena, “Does your dad ever cut his fingernails?”

“My dad cuts our fingernails,” Anora said, whining. “It hurts.”

I shared a look with Zwena—the “being a big sister is a tough job” look. And at that moment I hoped she would never leave our house and that she liked me as much as I liked her.

“I wonder what they’re talking about,” Zwena said, looking at Dad and Big Lyman above us in the yard. Then Zwena dared me to go see what they were talking about. Little Lyman reminded her that she had dared him to eat a rock, but I had never heard of daring.

“It’s like, I bet you that you won’t,” Zwena explained.

Which surprisingly really made me want to do it. I ran up the front steps to where Dad and Lyman were in the raised yard.

“Dad?” I asked. “What are you guys talking about . . . modeling?”

“Can’t you see we’re in the middle of things?” he asked. “What’s wrong with you?” He looked irate, and I wished I hadn’t gotten all caught up in daring.

But Big Lyman got me off the hook by saying, “Hey, why don’t you all go over to our house. I think Lordess is there, and we have a Slip ’n Slide.”

We trekked the eight blocks from our place over to Big Lyman and Lordess’s house—Zwena taking the lead. And the rest of the day was spent sliding on a sheet of clear plastic tarp that we wet with a hose. It worked just like a regular Slip ’n Slide but without the padding and a lot more bruising. But you
could get a faster slide going and at the end of the day, that seemed more important than functioning hips.